"Surrealist
Games" highlights collective play as a major form of surrealist
research. Currently featured here is the game Time-Travelers' Potlatch.

In
Time-Travelers' Potlatch, each player indicates the gift that
she/he would present to various historical, mythical, or fictional
figures on the occasion of their meeting. The game introduces the
object into an imaginary relationship that otherwise tends to
be defined too superficially by an arbitrary and abstract subjectivity.
The objectthe giftfunctions symbolically between
the giver (the player, who lives in the present) and the receiver
(who dwells in the past, or on another plane of existence). Altering
the relationship between the two, the imagined gift constitutes a
third term: a catalyst of the future in the form of a crystallization
of desire. Thus the game opens a new approach, from an unanticipated
angle, to all the old and unresolved problems of projection, identification,
idealization, fixation, obsession, etc.

The
examples here are selected from a game played in Chicago on October
2nd, 1999. Louis Armstrong, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and the
Marquis de Sade were all suggested as recipients, but players were
also invited to present gifts to anyone they liked.

A Selection of Gifts

Anne Olson

For
Catherine the Great: My foot and a chainsaw dipped in lime juice

For
the Marquis de Sade: Space shoes and ping pong and lollipops
and MTV

For
Hannah Höch: A rooster wearing a Balinese hat and playing
the "St. Louis Blues" on a trumpet

For
Robert Desnos: A very comfortable pillow that enables him to
communicate with the planet Venus while asleep, and which allows
him to become the first Earthman to play Venusian music on the harmonica

For
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: A castle on the East River with
hot and cold running words, steam-heated poetry, and wall-to-wall
chance encounters

Paul Garon

For
Memphis Minnie: 1000 silver dollars with which to make an entire
gown

For
Tommy Johnson: A case of 100-proof Chivas Regal and a set of
Steuben glass vessels to drink from

For
Sandor Ferenczi: Membership in a polygamous tribe

For
Louis Armstrong: A chauffeured pirogue, covered in fur, to sail
down the Hudson River

Sarah Metcalf

For
the Marquis de Sade: A bed of pink sherbet in a field of poppies

For
Saint-Just: A hall of mirrors where he could witness the infinity
of his physical being

For
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: A carousel of forbidden fruits
shrouded in piano keys

Jennifer Bean

For
Meret Oppenheim: Rocks of varying shapes and sizes that I collected
while walking from my home to hers

For
Franz Kafka: A newspaper article about the chess game between
Gary Kasparov and Deep Blue

For
the Marquis de Sade: Access to the Internet

For
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: A camera

Franklin Rosemont

For
Thelonious Monk: A rhinoceros-shaped piano covered with starfish

For
Mary Shelley: A large igloo on Waikiki Beach, with music by
Johnny Hodges

For
Louis Armstrong: The Eiffel Tower, painted black and leaning
at a 45 degree angle

For
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: a baby-blue steam locomotive in
which she could roar down the streets of New York

Ron Sakolsky

For
Vachel Lindsay: Sun Ra's celestial greetings sent from Saturn
in a pulsating mass of glowing blue light encircling the poet's
bed of dreams in mysterious Springfield, Illinois

For
Louis Armstrong: A platter of white hot chocolate alligators
to surround the perfect note

Ryan Deibert

For
Louis Armstrong: A postcard from Madame Laveau's; pasted to
the back, a picture of my friends and me asleep under his statue
at Congo Square

For
Joseph Cornell: My first diorama from kindergarten, in which
the heads of thistles were prehistoric trees for purple dinosaurs
to eat

"Game of
folded paper which consists of having several people compose a phrase
or drawing collectively, none of the participants having any idea
of the nature of the preceding contribution or contributions. The
now classical example, which gave its name to the game, is the first
sentence obtained in this manner: The exquisitecorpseshall
drinkthe youngwine."

Abridged
Dictionary of Surrealism (1938)

The Exquisite Corpse game has served many functions for the Chicago
Surrealists, their friends and their colleagues. It can be both initiatory
and exploratory, both inspiring and clarifying, both relaxing and
stimulating. And when one adds to this mixture the notion of the observer,
the functions multiply geometrically.